Interdisciplinary Seminars

Capitalism and Psychological Life
K20.1047 SOC, 4 CR MW 11:00-12:15 Michael Laskawy

One of the great intellectual quests of the modern era has been the attempt to theorize the relationship between economic and personal life. In this course, we will study how different thinkers have attempted to understand the changes wrought by capitalism psychologically. We will look at how new understandings of the processes of modernization and industrialization have been reinterpreted in terms of individuals—their needs, motivations, behaviors and “personalities.” And we will keep a special focus on the changing meanings of human nature as it has been conceived and reconceived throughout the twentieth century. We will read Marx on alienation, Durkheim on anomie, Weber on bureaucratic rationality, Riesman on other-directedness, as well as considering works by Smith, Tocqueville, Freud, Marcuse, Lasch, Sennett and others.

Imagining the Latin American Nation
K20.1050 HUM, 4 CR R 6:20-9:00 Alejandro Cañeque

The nation-state requires a sense of nationalism on the part of its citizens, a sense of belonging to an imagined community. This, in turn, requires a set of guiding principles accepted by the majority. Although the guiding fictions of nations are often fabrications as artificial as literary fictions, they give individuals a sense of nation, peoplehood, collective identity and national purpose. Nowhere is this blurring of the boundaries between politics and literature more evident than in Latin America, where many writers were among the fathers of the new countries and their novels played a fundamental role as foundational fictions of these new nations. In this course, therefore, we will examine how politics and the writing of literature have been inextricably linked in Latin America, exploring through the reading of essays and works of fiction how the new nations were imagined in these works and how later authors continued or reacted against this tradition of literary nation-builders. Readings will include novels and essays by Domingo Sarmiento, José de Alencar, José Enrique Rodó, José Martí, Octavio Paz, Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Carlos Fuentes.

Transcultural Dialogue in Performance
K20.1051 SOC, 4 CR W 12:30-3:15 Ann Axtmann

We live in an ever-shrinking, mobile and complex world. How can transcultural dialogue through performance facilitate a deeper understanding of our differences and shared concerns? The primary focus of this course is the process of “transculturation”—a term first coined in the 1940s by Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz. Students are asked to consider their own individual, family, and community identities as we examine transculturation in relation to everyday, aesthetic, and political performance. Participants attend NYC exhibits and live events in which race, ethnicity, gender, class, and age mix, match, and mingle. Native American powwows and the street demonstrations of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina serve as case studies. Readings from anthropology, sociology, and cultural studies include Coco Fusco’s English is Broken Here; Edward T. Hall’s Beyond Culture; Ortiz’s Cuban Counterpoint; and Moving the Center by Ngugi wa Thiong’o. Poems, short stories, and a novel may be included. Films are also screened. [$25 fee]

Poets in Protest: Footsteps to Hip-Hop
K20.1072 HUM, 4 CR W 2:00-4:45 Michael Dinwiddie

This seminar examines the tradition of poetic protest in the African Diaspora. From the Harlem Renaissance and Négritude to the Black Liberation Movement of the 60’s and today’s Hip-Hop/Rap explosion, poets, lyricists and rap/hip-hop artists have sought to reclaim and reshape images of themselves and their communal experiences. Through comparative and critical analysis of historical works, songs, and poetry, we will come to a deeper understanding of the common thematic and aesthetic approaches of these movements as they continue to alter the discourse on race and liberation. Texts may include Michael Richardson, ed., Refusal of the Shadow: Surrealism and the Caribbean; David L. Lewis, ed., The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader; Tricia Rose, Black Noise; films such as Euzhan Palcy, Sugar Cane Alley, and Tony Silver and Henry Chalfant, Style Wars; and samples from Langston Hughes, NWA, Amiri Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, KRS-One, OutKast, Dead Prez, Public Enemy, and Tupac Shakur.

The Caribbean: Crossroads and Creolization
K20.1074 SOC, 4 CR TR 4:55-6:10 A. Lauria-Perricelli

The first world region to be remade by European colonizers who massively imported laborers from Africa, India and Europe, the Caribbean became the meeting ground of three major continental diasporas. The rich variety of Caribbean cultures is diverse and complex, inflected by the multiple intersections of race, class, gender, language, religion, nationality, ethnicity, and place. This course considers the major socio-historical forces and the cultural purposes/projects that have shaped Caribbean realities. Using readings from anthropology, history and literature, we will examine continuity and change in the construction of various Caribbean identities. Texts may include James’ The Black Jacobins, Brown’s Mama Lola, Marshall’s The Chosen Place, The Timeless People, Holt’s The Problem of Freedom, Manuel, et. al. Caribbean Currents, Ferrer’s Insurgent Cuba, and and Fouron and Glick-Schiller’s Georges Woke Up Laughing.

Slavery and Culture: U.S. and Brazil
K20.1083 HUM, 4 CR MW 12:30-1:45 Clyde Taylor

The focus this year will use three angles of vision. First, we will discuss the extent to which African slavery was a defining experience of Western Hemispheric societies, contradicting the established image of a “brave new world.” Second, our discussions will acknowledge some continuities between the slavocracies and contemporary society. Third, we will witness the way what has been called “the African dynamic” has transformed the art, culture, language, spiritual reference, definition and meaning of “America.” Our concentration on the U.S. and Brazil will be extended to include insights from Cuba and Haiti.

Body and Soul
K20.1112 4 CR TR 11:00-12:15 Jean Graybeal

Embodiment, or the fact that we live “in,” “through,” or “as” bodies, has profound implications for our experience of existence. The course builds on the assumption that this human body is meaningful, symbolic, and questionable; it is therefore important and worthy of reflection and study. We look first at the philosophical roots of Western mind-body dualism, reading Plato and Descartes, and explore Susan Bordo’s analysis of the effects such a perspective may have on our lives (Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body). We then pursue some alternative understandings, both non-Western and Western, including Kristofer Schipper’s The Taoist Body and Shunryu Suzuki’s Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind.

Fate and Free Will in the Epic Tradition
K20.1116 HUM, 4 CR W 6:20-9:00 Antonio Rutigliano

The role of the gods in human affairs inevitably raises the question of fate and free will. The epics, from the ancient world to the Renaissance, frequently reflect and define this debate. This course examines how the epics of Homer, Vergil, Dante and Milton not only mirror the philosophical and theological perceptions of the period, but sometimes forecast future debates on the issue. Readings may include the Epic of Gilgamesh, Iliad or Odyssey, Aeneid, and Divine Comedy, as well as selections from Plato’s Protagoras or Aristotle’s Ethics, Cicero’s De Fato, Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, and Fromm’s Escape From Freedom.

Voyages of Identity: Travel, Tourism, Adventure
K20.1124 HUM, 4 CR R 3:30-6:10 Steve Hutkins

This course explores the experience of travel and the many questions it raises about social identity and cultural difference, the traveler’s search for adventure and authenticity, the relationship between tourism and colonialism, and the pervasive use of metaphors of travel in the discourse of postmodernism. Readings will encompass various genres of travel literature—logs, journals, letters, ethnographies, and narratives. Readings may include Flaubert in Egypt, Naipaul’s An Area of Darkness, Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London, Chatwin's Songlines, Mary Morris’s Nothing to Declare, and Calvino’s Invisible Cities.

The Medieval Mind
K20.1135 HUM, 4 CR W 3:30-6:10 Pat Rock

The cultural legacy of the Middle Ages continues to challenge and enchant us: its soaring architecture, its large philosophical and theological questions, its magnificent art, literature, and music. This course explores the genius of the medieval mind and its transcendent vision of life. A major focus of the course will be a study of the Realist-Nominalist controversy spurred by Aquinas and Ockham and its effect on writers such as Chaucer and Dante, as well as on the painting, music, and architecture of the period. Readings may include selections from Dante’s Inferno, Aquinas’ Summa Theologica, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and the writings of the Pearl Poet. The course may include field trips to the Cloisters, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and a performance of medieval music.

Images of America’s Past
K20.1141 4 CR W 12:30-3:15 Don White

The course traces the ways individuals perceive some of the central themes of the American experience. Through film, literature, and histories, we will explore the cultural images depicting periods of Native-American life and European settlement to the present. Film images are compared to works of literature, history and social science for what they convey of historical reality, illusion, and symbol and myth. Traditional interpretations of American life are contrasted with recent alternative or revisionist views. In addition to viewing film clips, the class will read histories—the classic study by Nevins and Commager, the revisionist interpretation by Howard Zinn, and O’Connor’s American History, American Film, as well as novels and best sellers—Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind, Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, and Kovic’s Born on the Fourth of July.

Borders of Western Imagination
K20.1143 HUM, 4 CR MW 3:30-4:45 Clyde Taylor

Why do boundaries of perception exist in societies, and what are these walls and barriers made of? Columbus supposedly navigated across one boundary of Western consciousness in his time. Freud confronted another. Where are the limits of our imagination sentried today, and what is on the other side of them? Borders of Western Imagination is an expedition into the mental landscape at the points where Western thought intersects with the unwestern, unfamiliar, unsimilar, focusing on the Other outside of the Western definition of itself, and therefore glimpsing the Other within. Frontiers of Western self-definition may include monotheism, aesthetics, cannibalism, the “Great Books,” capitalism, and American exceptionalism. Texts may include: Freud, The Future of an Illusion; Deborah Root, Cannibal Culture; Bernard McGrane, Beyond Anthropology; Richard Wright, “The Man Who Lived Underground”; and Walter Mosley, Working on the Chain Gang. Probable films: The Matrix, Fight Club, Ritual Clowns, and The Name of the Rose.

Free Speech, Media Law, and Democracy
K20.1144 SOC, 4 CR W 6:20-9:00 Paul Thaler

The tension between free expression and social control has shadowed the Great American Conversation since the birth of this country. The constitutional ideal that our government “shall make no law” abridging free speech has given way, in fact, to laws that limit discussion, ostensibly for the public good. Likewise, new media technologies advance our ability to access and exchange ideas and information, but raise new questions as to the limits of such dialogue. This course, then, addresses the delicate balance between free speech and democracy, guided by our readings of Plato’s Republic, Milton’s Areopagitica, and Lippmann’s Public Opinion. We also examine important Supreme Court decisions that have shaped First Amendment rights in regard to hate speech, pornography, corporate control of mass media, and the rights of journalists. With this foundation, we ask: Are there any forms of free speech that should be restricted? If so, which? And, who should decide?

The American Century
K20.1146 4 CR R 2:00-4:45 Don White

This course explores America at home and abroad since World War II as revealed in the culture of literature, art, music, film, radio, and television. During this period, America rose to preeminence in world affairs, American wealth was unprecedented, and the scope of American influence unsurpassed. But the uses of American power have had repercussions, and in recent years questions have been raised about America's future. We will examine both the internal dynamics and foreign manifestations of America’s world role: the affluent society and deindustrialization, civil rights and repression, youth and the older generations, and world power and the developing world. Class sessions will feature clips of films, radio programs, television broadcasts, and music recordings from rock to hip hop. The readings may include Hersey’s A Bell for Adano, Galbraith’s The Affluent Society, Riesman’s The Lonely Crowd, Marcuse’s An Essay on Liberation, and King’s Where Do We Go from Here?.

The Darwinian Revolution
K20.1156 SCI, 4 CR MW 12:30-1:45 Gene Cittadino

open to Gallatin students only.

Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection may be the single most influential, and controversial, scientific theory ever proposed. This course will examine the origin, nature, and consequences of Darwin’s theory, with an emphasis on interrelationships among the social, cultural, and intellectual dimensions of the scientific enterprise. Topics include the connections between Darwinian theory and social, political, and moral discourse in Victorian Britain; initial and more recent scientific and public controversies; resistance to the theory by conservative Christians; applications and misapplications of the theory, such as Social Darwinism, eugenics, and sociobiology; and the influence of Darwinian thought on literature and the arts. In addition to Darwin’s Origin of Species and excerpts from Voyage of the Beagle and Descent of Man, readings will likely include Kurt Vonnegut’s Galapagos, selections from Malthus, Spencer, and Huxley, and recent works by Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould.

A Sense of Place
K20.1181 HUM, 4 CR T 3:30-6:10 Steve Hutkins

This course examines the places in which we work, travel, play, and dwell—the office tower and the suburban house, the city street and the superhighway, the small town and the megalopolis, the shopping mall and the theme park. Synthesizing insights from several fields, including cultural geography, urban studies, and architectural history, we explore such questions as: How do our values and worldview affect the way we experience places? How do places shape our attitudes and behavior? What are the qualities, both good and bad, of the places we inhabit, and what could we do to design and build better places? Readings may include J. B. Jackson’s A Sense of Place, A Sense of Time, James Kunstler’s The Geography of Nowhere, Rem Koolhaas’s Delirious New York, and Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities.

Culture as Communication
K20.1193 SOC, 4 CR W 3:30-6:10 Vasu Varadhan

This course examines the concept of culture through its forms of communication. The shift from orality to literacy and on to electronic processing has important consequences for the social, political, and economic structures within a culture. If we take as axiomatic that every culture wishes to preserve itself through its forms of communication, we then need to ask ourselves which forms of communication are best suited for this purpose. What happens to cultures when traditional forms of communication are forced to compete with the newer technologies? What do we mean by “knowledge” in the age of information? The impact of written narrative on orality will be discussed as well as the changes brought about by the invention of the printing press. We will examine the development of electronic media including the newer technologies such as the Internet and analyze their effects on individual and cultural levels. Readings may include Plato’s Phaedrus, the Bhagavad Gita, Walter Ong’s Orality and Literacy, Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, McLuhan’s Understanding Media, Postman’s Technopoly and Rosen’s The Unwanted Gaze.

Poetry, Prophecy, Politics
K20.1198 4CR M 12:30-3:15 Goldfarb/Shulman

formerly titled “Poetry and Politics in America” (course is not repeatable).

This course examines the relationship between poetry and politics. For many readers, poetry ‘changes nothing,’ whereas politics means enacting worldly agendas by the exercise of power. Poetry seems private, emotional, and unworldly because it is concerned with aesthetic arrangement and sound, whereas politics is viewed as public, impersonal and worldly because it concerns collective action, institutions, and social change. Many poets, however, claim for poetry a public, collective, worldly and political meaning. Blake, Shelley, Whitman, Emerson, Thoreau, and Ginsberg give poets a profoundly “political” role. Conversely, political leaders and movements often draw on and use poetic resources to envision and motivate change. Despite these similarities, “poetry” and “politics” denote antithetical sensibilities and enterprises. In this course, we pursue the vexed relationship between poetry and politics by comparing several lyric poets to avowedly political texts. We will also read in the genre of “prophecy” to explore a poetry with worldly aims. What is the relationship between prophets, announcing god’s word, and poets offering world-transforming visions? Is prophecy always a form of poetry, and poetry a form of prophecy? How are poetry and prophecy used to address the crises and fate of the American republic? Readings may include: the Hebrew prophets and Christian gospels, Shelley, Blake, Whitman, Emerson, Thoreau, Douglass, King, Stevens, Rich, and Ginsberg.

Race, Class, and Gender in Latin America
K20.1209 SOC, 4 CR TR 2:00-3:15 Alejandro Cañeque

formerly titled “The Construction of race and ethnicity in Latin America” (course is not repeatable).

Some of the most enduring images with which Latin America is usually associated construct the region as inhabited by a brown people made up of dominant males and meek and subservient women. Yet Latin America is also a land of powerful feminine symbols or where the population of some countries is mostly white. In this course, we will try to elucidate the accuracy and significance of these contrasting images of race and gender and how they have interacted with class differences in the making of national, political and economic divisions. We will seek to discover the processes by which gender and racial identities have been constructed, challenged, or revised, from colonial times to the present. We will also look at the various meanings of concepts such as “race,” “masculinity,” or “femininity,” and consider the appropriateness of applying North American feminist and race theories to Latin American realities. Readings will include Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’s The Answer, José Vasconcelos’s The Cosmic Race, Gilberto Freyre’s The Masters and The Slaves, Tomás Eloy Martínez’s Santa Evita, and Melhuus and Stølen’s Machos, Mistresses, Madonnas.

The Teachings of the Buddha:Buddhist Influence on Western Psychology
K20.1211 HUM, 4 CR TR 9:30-10:45 Lee Robbins

The course will explore in depth the Great Awakening of Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, and the psychological principles that came out of his experience to form the cornerstone of Theraveda Buddhism. We will also examine parallel developments in the western psychologies of Freud, Jung, Varela and Winnicott. We begin with an overview of Buddhist history and then trace the ancient roots of Buddha’s understanding of the human psyche through the pre-Aryan, Aryan and Brahmanical cultures. Special attention will be given to a comparison of karmaas understood by Buddha and Jung’s archetype. Readings may include a source book with sutras from the Pali canon; essays from Jung, Varela and Winnicott; Paul Williams' Budhist Thought, Edward Conze’s A Short History of Buddhism, John Strong's The Buddha: A Short Biography, and Wings to Awakening and Mind Like Fire Unbound by Thanissaro Bhikkhu.

Beyond Good and Evil: Gangsters, Violence, and the Urban Landscape
K20.1220 HUM, 4 CR T 3:30-6:10, R 4:55-6:10 Cornyetz

The course will sample and discuss various social science, philosophic, psychoanalytic, and critical writings on ethics, good and evil, and violence, and their representations in the visual arts alongside viewing films by filmmakers such as John Woo, Quentin Tarantino, Kitano Takeshi and Wong Kar-Wai. We will be attentive to the films’ formal reliance on lyricized violence, non-linear time, and the poeticized isolation of cityscapes. The course will also debate the relationally porous boundaries between good and evil, the question of gangster ethics, and the relentless depictions of individual alienation and anomie in these films. Readings will include: Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil; Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, and selections from Confucius, The Analects and Yamamoto, The Hagakure: A Code to the Way of the Samurai.

Women and the Politics of Work
K20.1290 HUM, 4 CR R 3:30-6:10 Laura Ciolkowski

From streetwalking to housekeeping, reproductive labor to factory labor, this course will explore the social and cultural politics of the work that women do in America. Some of the questions we will address include: How is “women’s work” defined? What is the relationship between women’s paid and unpaid labor? What are some of the cultural values attached to traditionally female labor and how are these values reproduced or challenged through institutions like the Law and the Family? Readings will be drawn from a wide range of fields, including literature, law, history, sociology and psychology and will address such topics as: Martha Stewart and “hyperdomesticity”; the economics of sex work; female labor and bourgeois identity; race, class and domestic work; the politics of motherhood in America. Authors may include: Barbara Ehrenreich, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Martha Stewart, Herman Melville, Karen Finley, Alice Kessler-Harris, Joan Scott and Priscilla Alexander.

Diasporic Conditions
K20.1291 SOC, 4 CR M 2:00-4:45 Asale Angel-Ajani

In this course we will query the conditions of living at the crossroads of history and memory for communities that traverse boarders. We will approach the theories of Diaspora broadly and comparatively in an attempt to understand the uniqueness and similarities between diasporic communities. While emphasis will be placed on current debates in the field, we will draw on studies from earlier periods to bring into question how global and local notions of identity, citizenship, and belonging have been challenged, discussed and reinvented. We will critically investigate how past and present understandings of diasporic conditions are impacted by geopolitical factors, race, gender, sexuality, and class. Our goal is to push beyond the inattention to structural inequalities that seems to characterize much of the literature. Readings include: Aihwa Ong’s Flexible Citizenship, Paul Gilroy’s The Black Atlantic, Avtar Brah’s Cartographies of Diaspora. We will screen the films, Daughters of the Dust, Hate and Bhaji on the Beach.

Philosophy of Medicine:An Interdisciplinary Approach
K20.1294 SCI, 4 CR R 3:30-6:10 Bradley Lewis

open to Gallatin students only. Formerly titled “Medical Science and Philosophical Inquiry” (course is not repeatable).

Models of health and healing dramatically shape medical research and medical practice. Depending on which medical model you use, you create radically different solutions for key questions like: What is disease? What is health? What is the role of healthcare? What is the core knowledge base for healthcare? And what is the best way to pursue medical inquiry? In addition, medical models also shape the way the broader culture understands bodies, race, age, gender, sex, sexuality, desire, death, disability, biotechnology, and care of the self. In this class, we introduce students to the world of medicine through fictional and documentary portrayals of illness. We consider several medical model approaches to illness, suffering, and bodies. Plus, we use a range of interdisciplinary scholarship for context and reflection. Topics covered include philosophy of medicine, phenomenology and existentialism, psychoanalytic theories of loss, Buddhist philosophy, narrative theory, sociology of medicine, gender studies, and disability studies.

Ethics for Dissenters
K20.1313 SOC, 4 CR W 3:30-6:10 Bill Caspary

This course is about dissent in a double sense: criticizing accepted ethical values, and criticizing old ways of philosophical thought about ethics. It is about affirmative ethics, not just criticism. Topics will grow from student questions and concerns, as well as the professor’s. Suggested topics include viewpoints and skills to: (1) Criticize unjust ethical standards, e. g. sexist ones, and invent fair ones; (2) Choose ethical careers and life paths; (3) Recognize responsibilities to the larger community; (4) Resolve ethical dilemmas; (5) Justify visions of a better world; (6) Dialogue productively with adversaries; (7) Respect different ethical positions without “anything goes;” (8) Learn, and question, and still have principles; (9) Get beyond dead-end debate on idealism/realism, egotism/altruism, objectivism/relativism? (When is it justified to defeat adversies politically, as with civil rights laws? Is force justified, as in the American Civil War?) Readings from feminist, pragmatist, existentialist, ecological, nonviolence and conflict resolution, neo-classical, Marxist, and humanistic and developmental psychology approaches ­ as alternatives to mainstream Kantian and utilitarian ethics. Authors include de Beauvoir, Dewey, Emerson, Gandhi, Gilligan, James, Kohlberg, Marx, Maslow, Nietzsche, Nussbaum, Rogers, Sartre.

Literary and Cultural Theory:An Interdisciplinary Introduction
K20.1314 HUM, 4 CR MW 2:00-3:15 Sara Murphy

In this course, we will examine several questions that arise for students interested in the relation of theory to interdisciplinary study. What is theory essentially? How does it help us to develop approaches and shape questions for study? What are some influential theoretical schools and theoreticians? What do they say and how might they be related to one another? We will proceed through readings from Structuralism to Post-structuralism, focusing on language, feminism, psychoanalysis, deconstruction and interpretations of power and discourse. Authors considered may include Levi-Strauss, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, and Luce Irigaray.

Shakespeare and the London Theatre
K20.1318 HUM, 4 CR TR 3:30-4:45 Bella Mirabella

In this class we will take a visit to London in the years 1590 to 1616, in search of Shakespeare and the London in which he lived and wrote. During this period, London at the height of its Renaissance power, was a center of dramatic arts unparalleled in the rest of Europe. Volumes of plays were written, theaters were built all over London, and each day, during the season, those theaters were filled with audiences who were drawn from every social and economic class and both genders. Theater was a craze. It was the center of cultural life in London. And in the center of this remarkably, vibrant creative world, Shakespeare was a superstar. We will examine the city of London, Shakespeare, and theater from literary, historical, political and cultural perspectives. Our consideration of the theater will be in relation to the roles women played as performers and to other forms of popular entertainment, such as dancing and mountebank performances. We will read a selection of plays written by Shakespeare such as As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing, Richard III, Hamlet, and The Tempest. We will also see film versions of some of the plays and go to the New York theater.

Sacred Space
K20.1321 4 CR W 2:00-4:45 Jean Graybeal

Places that evoke a sense of meaning, power, community, identity, memory, mystery, or transcendence participate in the social construction of the “sacred.” Temples, mosques, synagogues, cathedrals and chapels, burial grounds and memorials, parks and courtyards, museums, libraries, courts, stock exchanges and banks ... all have their own relationship to what cultures and subcultures hold sacred. This course explores the concept and experience of “sacred space” through readings in religious studies, philosophy, and cultural geography, through visits to sacred places in New York City, and through an optional service learning project. Readings may include Eliade’s The Sacred and the Profane, Heschel’s The Sabbath, Belden C. Lane’s Landscapes of the Sacred: Geography and Narrative in American Spirituality, Robert A. Orsi, ed., Gods of the City: Religion and the American Urban Landscape. Students should plan to pay for their own local travel and admission fees, which total approximately $30 for the semester.

Baseball as a Road to God
K20.1324 2 CR M 6:45-8:45 John Sexton

permission of the instructor required. To request permission, please complete the application form, available at 715 broadway, 5th floor. course meets on the following dates: 1/24, 1/31, 2/14, 2/21, 2/28, 3/28, 4/11, 4/25, and 5/2.

Baseball has been called America’s game, and it captures the American progressive spirit in a special way. (Only in America would there be a game the object of which would be to bat a ball outside a playing field, with the result named “going home.”) Still more, the game has revealed a capacity to grip individuals, families, and collections of friends in a way that transforms their experience of the mundane into something sublime—for some, a genuinely spiritual experience. This course examines baseball as a metaphor capable of producing such experiences. It uses both a set of readings illustrative of the metaphor (such as Kinsella’s The Iowa Baseball Confederacy) and a set of readings reflecting on the metaphor (such as Giamatti’s A Great and Glorious Game). These readings are discussed against a background of religion as a phenomenon (illustrated with texts such as Eliade’s The Sacred and the Profane). The course entails a commitment to substantial reading (12 books and additional short pieces) and writing (7 papers of 5-6 pages and 1 longer final paper). Class discussion requires a mastery of the readings before class and participation is required.

South Asian Writers: Mapping the Diaspora
K20.1335 HUM, 4 CR TR 2:00-3:15 Vasu Varadhan

In recent years there has been a dramatic increase of immigrants to the United States and Great Britian. A new generation of South Asian writers wrestles with the conflicts of the concept of home as a physical site in the new country and the concept of home as an emotional site with ties to the ancestral country. The notion of a hybrid identity emerges which contests existing roles and leads individuals to either accept or reject new forms of belonging. Francoise Lionnet in “Postcolonial Representations,” uses the concept of metissage or cultural mixing to analyze the psychological and social mechanisms of exile and displacement. Ella Shohat in “Unthinking Eurocentrism,” develops the idea of polyculturalism as a way of relieving the burden of representation. This course will explore the tensions of race, class and gender as evidenced in the writings of Jhumpa Lahiri, Mitra Kalita, Amitava Kumar and Hari Kunzru along with selected writings from Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. Recent films that focus on second generation South Asian immigrants such as American Desi, Brothers in Trouble, and Proud to be Indian will also be used to examine contemporary issues of assimilation and acculturation.

Everyday Economics:Contemporary Economic Issues
K20.1336 SOC, 4 CR MW 12:30-1:45 Kim Phillips-Fein

Economic policies and the state of the economy shape all of our lives in fundamental ways, affecting our social position, the kind of work we are able to do, the types of goods we are able to consume, and our very ability to survive. This course will teach students to understand basic modes of thinking about the economy and develop opinions on economic policies for themselves. We will discuss different models of the economy and the basic categories of economic analysis, and then we will analyze real-world economic issues in their historical context. Examples of topics we will cover include: free trade, globalization and the anti-globalization movement; the stock market; homelessness; unions; monetary and fiscal policy; the economics of war; the causes of inequality. This is not an economics class, but a course that should give non-economists the tools to think about the economy.

Beyond the Invisible Hand: The History of Economic Thought
K20.1337 SOC, 4 CR M 3:30-6:10 Kim Phillips-Fein

What is the economy, and how did it come to be understood as a separate, discrete realm of society, so unique that it demands its own academic discipline? How have philosophers understood the basic problems of economics—production, labor, coercion, risk, leisure, desire, self-realization, and the constraints of the material world—over time? Contemporary economics is modeled to a great extent on the hard sciences, and claims to reveal the universal laws that underlie the immense complexity of economic life. The economy, however, is itself a historical and political realm, shaped in fundamental ways by human choices, and the very way that people think about and try to make sense of the economy is influenced by historical circumstance. In this course, we will read and analyze works of economic philosophy and literature in order to understand the variety of ways that people have looked at economic life. Readings may include Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Max Weber, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Friedrich Hayek.

The Search for Community
K20.1338 SOC, 4 CR TR 3:30-4:45 David Moore

Some people see community in a romantic vision of River City and the small town where everyone knows everyone else; some find it in a bustling urban neighborhood with its food coops and street fairs; yet others find virtual community online. This course will examine some of the literatures on the concept and experience of community—in sociology, anthropology, politics, history—and help students grapple with its meaning in their lives. It will ask: What is community? Has it changed historically? What are its benefits (to individual well-being, child development, or political solidarity) and dangers (to individual expression, economic development, or political democracy)? How has community been represented in literature and the other creative arts?

Foucault: Biopower and Biopolitics
K20.1339 SCI, 4 CR M 6:20-9:00 Bradley Lewis

open to Gallatin students only.

Michel Foucault rarely discussed gay and lesbian issues in his scholarly writings. But, after dying of AIDS in 1984, he became a key source for AIDS activism and queer theory. Foucault’s radical approach to the body destabilized rigid distinctions between biology and culture, and it anticipated a new form of “bio-politics.” These politics were first used by ACT-UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) and have gone on to influence feminist theory of the body, disability studies, queer theory, and WTO activism. All of these new politics focus on the dense intertwining of science, discipline, power, and desire that Foucault conceptualized as biopower. We devote this class to close readings of Foucault’s theory of biopower and its relevance for AIDS activism. Selections from Foucault include Birth of the Clinic: An Archeology of Medical Perception, Discipline and Punishment, History of Sexuality, and some of his later interviews. We also read selections from David Halperin’s Saint=Foucault, Steve Epstein’s Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge, and Paula Triechler’s How to Have Theory in an Epidemic: Cultural Chronicles of AIDS.

Hiroshima
K20.1340 HUM, 4 CR M 3:30-6:10 Nina Cornyetz

On August 6, 1945 the city of Hiroshima in Japan was leveled by the first atomic bomb. On August 9, the city of Nagasaki was leveled by the second bomb. It is estimated that between 210,000 and 270,000 people were killed, some immediately, some from the radiation days or months later, These estimates do not include more long-term impacts of the radiation, such as birth defects, or various cancers. How can we, as human beings, make sense of these events? How can we cope with, and represent unthinkable trauma? What are the politics of such representation? What processes of healing are possible through remembering? Is it important to represent such traumas, and if so, why? This course will explore a selection of Japanese historical, literary, cinematic, musical, and other venues in which this unrepresentable trauma was, and continues to be, indeed, represented. We will aim at exploring the processes of mourning, remembering, and representing collective cultural trauma. Readings will include: Michael Hogan, ed. Hiroshima in History and Memory, John Treat, Writing Ground Zero, Sigmund Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia,” Walter Benjamin, selections, and selected short fiction from Crazy Iris. We will view documentary and narrative films, including Black Rain.

Metaphor and Meaning
K20.1289 HUM, 4 CR MW 11:00-12:15 Stacy Pies

Aristotle described metaphor in The Poetics as “the mark of genius, for to make good metaphors implies an eye for resemblances” (XXII). Since ancient times, poets and philosophers have written about metaphor and its power, while visual artists have transposed the techniques of figurative language from the verbal to the visual. Metaphor has been employed in texts as ornamentation, as a means of introducing new ideas and concepts, and as a way of imitating the working of the mind itself. In this class, we investigate how metaphor, verbal and visual, influences our processes of thinking, creating, and innovating, both intellectually and artistically. And we experiment with making our own metaphors, in words and pictures. Readings will range over poetry, philosophy, theory of art, and linguistics, including essays by Plato, Derrida, Ricoeur, Lakoff, Richards, Arnheim, Gombrich, and Toulmin, and poetry by Shakespeare, Spenser, Blake, Brontë, Rossetti, Rilke, Stevens, Williams, Brooks, Hughes, and Bishop, among others. We will also discuss artwork and films.

Language, Globalization and the Self
K20.1157 SOC, 4 CR R 3:30-6:10 M.-L. Achino-Loeb

This course is intended as an exploration of language as vehicle for processes of globalization. What role did language play in the changes wrought by early capitalist transformations and the colonial expansion? Conversely, how have these global changes affected localized communities and the languages that identifies them? And why should we care? To answer these questions we will examine how the colonial experience has given rise to value-laden linguistic practices that mirror and sustain the racializing of privilege; and how the experience of language-loss encountered by voluntary and involuntary migrants can attack the integrity of the self. While ultimately concerned with language, our discussions will have a wide scope ranging from issues of political economy to collective consciousness and individual psychology. The core of our readings will be Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities; Eric Wolf’s Europe and the People Without History; Eva Hoffman’s Lost in Translation; Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions; and Richard Rodriguez’ Hunger of Memory. We will also read excerpts from Arjun Appadurai’s Modernity at Large, Kwame Anthony Appiah’s In My Father’s House, and Jameson and Miyoshi’s The Cultures of Globalization.

Understanding Human Rights
K20.1343 SOC, 4 CR T 2:00-4:45 Asale Angel-Ajani

In this course we will explore human rights as both a discourse and a means of political action. First we look at the emergence of human rights in the twentieth century, asking: how do we understand the concept? We also explore the debates over the universality of the existing human rights discourse and practice. Then we will turn to the question of how human rights are connected to political, civil, and economic rights. Through an examination of case studies we will investigate the usefulness of the existing human rights paradigms within cross-cultural contexts. Our goal is to understand the meaning and relevance of human rights in dealing with major issues throughout the world, exploring the issues of rights of women and children, torture, political repression, war crimes and genocide. Readings may include: Rebecca Cook’s State Responsibility for Violations of Women’s Rights, Franz Kafka’s The Trial, Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink's Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics, Abdullahi an-Naim’s Human Rights in Cross-Cultural Perspectives: A Quest for Consensus, and George Andreopoulos’ Genocide: The Conceptual and Historical Dimensions.

Staging Modernity:Ibsen, Chekhov and Strindberg
K20.1344 HUM, 4 CR W 3:30-6:10 Alycia Smith-Howard

Before “The Real World,” “Big Brother” and the advent of other present-day “reality” television there was Ibsen, Strindberg and Chekhov. In the spirit of their time, each of these dramatists sought to expose the everyday reality of their contemporary societies. In doing so these three pillars of Modern Drama revolutionized dramaturgy and theatre aesthetics in the late 19th century. Their controversial plays exposed a range a taboo themes and subjects, offering audiences candid, detailed (and often shocking) depictions of the human condition (and its supposed fundamental urges of fear, hunger and sex) and intimate views of private lives within the domestic realm. In this course we will explore the historical and cultural conditions and innovations which fueled these writers, including the early women’s movement, emancipation and the struggle for legal equality, and developments in scientific, social, political and aesthetic thought. Other key themes of this course include: dramaturgy and theatre aesthetics (the links between history, theory, playwriting and stage practice), representations of women, production history and critical reception. Readings include Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and Hedda Gabler; Chekhov’s The Seagull and The Cherry Orchard; and Strindberg’s Miss Julie and The Father.

Women and Islam
K20.1346 SOC, 4 CR M 6:10-9:00 Farideh Koohi-Kamali

The position of women in Islam is the subject of ongoing debate in both the Islamic world and the West. However, since September 11, this debate has found a wider audience. The images of Afghan women in their burkas, being beaten for not properly covering their feet or their faces, have disturbed many of us, and prompted us to ask the question: “Is the ill treatment of women inherent to Islam?” In this course, we shall attempt to respond to this question by examining some of the fundamental laws of Islam, and by examining the role and the position of women in various Islamic countries. We shall explore the laws and regulations—which define the role and status of women in Islam—while challenging some of the clichés regarding the role of women in the Muslim world. We shall also analyze and compare some social and economic data regarding the status of the female population in Muslim countries. Finally, we shall examine women’s movements, including “Islamic Feminism”, by looking at women’s art and writing, as well as their political activities in Muslim countries. Texts include: Muslims: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices, by Rippin; Women in Islam, by Roald; and Women Claim Islam, by Cooke; as well as films and documentaries, including Khandehar and Yul.

Images and Empire
K20.1348 HUM, 4CR T 3:30-6:10 John Short

This course will examine the relationship between visual culture and empire—how images figured in the formation and diffusion of imperialism. We will begin by historicizing concepts of “visual culture” and “visuality” and by considering different disciplinary approaches. We will then analyze the diverse roles that images play in the spectacle of empire, from the classificatory description of the catalogue and archive to the iconography of imperial power and images of the colonized as exotic or primitive. We will discuss issues of representation, reception, the place of imperialism in visual culture, and of images in consolidating imperial power. While the course will emphasize modern Europe, it will also address contemporary discussions about US imperialism and examine the circulation of mass-cultural images across the postcolonial world. Readings will include work by Georg Simmel, Walter Benjamin, Benedict Anderson, Edward Said, Timothy Mitchell, Jonathan Crary, and T. J. Clark.

 

Walk Like a Man: Masculinity through the Shifting Eyes of Popular Culture
K20.1349    HUM, 4CR    R 3:30-6:10    Kelly Kessler

Walk Like a Man: Masculinity through the Shifting Eyes of Popular Culture This seminar will examine shifting articulations of masculinity within film, television, and music over the past half century. Whether through the construction of fatherhood, the single guy, the sex symbol, or the business man, mass mediated images of men have changed to reinforce (and guide) the social state of gendered identity. For example, from Ozzie and Harriet’s Ozzie, to All in the Family’s Archie to Malcolm in the Middle’s Hal, the certainty, responsibility, and primacy of fatherhood shifted as America’s divorce rates rose and primary identificatory characteristics of proper masculinity realigned. From Bobby Rydell to Jim Morrison to New Kids on the Block, Bruce Springsteen, or Eminem, rock stars/pop stars carry and convey differing levels of rebellion and sexuality. Similarly, throughout the history of genre films—Westerns, musicals, et al.—gendered codes shift to adhere to those forming in society. Along with these changes in representation, we will be examining—through readings and screenings—social changes in American masculinity and how the culture industries themselves shift structurally and/or formally to facilitate such gender redefinition. Readings will include works from scholars such as Judith Butler, Barbara Ehrenreich, Thomas Doherty, Simon Frith and Angela McRobbie.